Barack Obama leads John McCain by 9 in Ohio and McCain's ahead by 1 in Missouri.

I think Ohio is critical. If McCain loses there, I think he loses the election.

"If Ohio goes for Obama, it may be lights out for McCain,” said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University in Boston. "At least today, the probability of an Ohio win is supported by the high-single-digit lead in the statewide poll coupled with the Perry County bellwether, which showed Obama leading by 4 percent.”

The University of Wisconsin Advertising project has released an interesting report (pdf)on ad spending in Ohio by the candidates and interest groups supporting them:

Obama outspent Hillary 2 to 1 on ads.

In the high-profile Ohio presidential primary campaign, the campaigns of the two Democratic candidates for president aired over 16,000 spots, spending approximately $6.8 million. Obama outspent Clinton by a margin of nearly two-to-one, with the Illinois Senator spending over $4.4 million to air just over 10,000 spots. Clinton spent $2.3 million and aired just over six thousand spots. Republicans were largely absent in Ohio; neither John McCain nor Mike Huckabee aired a single ad leading up to the Ohio primary.

The SEIU and United Food and Commerical Workers Int'l Union spent $1 million in Ohio on ads for Obama. The 527 group supporting Hillary took spent $80,000. [More...]

There are new articles today in the Dallas News and the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the Republican cross-over vote (Dems for a Day)and whether it had any effect on the outcome. Some Obama supporters would have you believe that it was of such significance as to result in Obama's loss in those states.

In Ohio, the article says there were 16,000 cross-over votes in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland.) The article talks about Rush Limbaugh urging Republicans to vote for Hillary, but of those interviewed in the article, one Republican voted for Hillary and one for Obama. They had different opinions on who would be better able to beat McCain. Obama won by 23,000 votes in Cuyahoga. Effect of the cross-over vote on the election: none shown and it's not even determinable which candidate they voted for.

In an opinion piece, the co-author of the Dallas News article, Wayne Slater, shows how the effect was negligible on Hillary's Texas win. [More...]

I wrote so many posts last week like this one about Ohio and the rural vote, both from a historical perspective and for this year. I feel vindicated -- here's a new AP article today that explains how well Hillary did in the Ohio rural vote, how it was her intentional strategy, how John Kerry failed to go after it or win it, and more.

Bottom line: The Dems can take Ohio in November. But not without that rural vote, which went astonishingly for Hillary.

Decades have passed since Ohio last saw a competitive Democratic primary, and the interest showed in a record turnout of 48 percent of registered voters.

Clinton still garnered more interest than Kerry in his primary four years ago. Where she won 81 percent of the vote in Scioto County, Kerry got 55 percent in his 2004 primary. Where she got 80 percent of the vote in Jackson County, Kerry got 64 percent. Where Clinton got 78 percent of the vote in Lawrence County, Kerry got 59 percent.

This is what Hillary did in her New York Senate races. Howard Wolfson says it's been her strategy in all the primary races. [More...]

Hillary's on her way to speak to supporters, the networks will cover it.

Update: Live blogging her victory speech: Hillary is jubilant. She looks fabulous in red. The song playing: Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising." She's smiling from ear to ear. "As Ohio goes, so does the nation."

"This nations coming back and so is this campaign."

"No one has won the White House in recent memory without winning the Ohio primary."

She lists all the states she has won. "Americans don't deserve more speeches, they deserve solutions and they deserve them now."

"We're ready for health care for every American." She does a recap of the 3 am call... "There's no time for speeches or on the job training." She looks forward to debating John McCain. [More...]

Update (TL): Hillary now leads in Texas by 1,800 votes. All the commenters agree, whatever happens in Texas tonight, Hillary will stay in until Pennsylvania. She has the momentum now. Most of those deciding who to vote for in the last three days picked her. She's got 2/3 of the Latino vote, which makes up 1/3 of all Texas voters.

Bump and Update: The Texas Democratic Party sent out this directive (pdf)to both campaigns this afternoon cautioning against what I reported below. So they obviously heard it too, although the letter went to both campaigns, not just Obama's.

Campaign workers, volunteers and/or supporters have obtained copies of blank sign-in sheets for precinct conventions and are having them filed in now with the desire of turning them in once the convention gets underway. These sign-in sheets are invalid and will not be considered in determining the allocation of delegates. See Tex. Dem. Pty. Rule. IV(B)(6).

I'm receiving reports that contrary to Texas Democratic party caucus rules that preclude registration forms from being submitted before either 7:15 pm or the last vote at a precinct has been cast, Obama volunteers are handing out the forms at precincts today and asking people to fill them in and then collecting them. For Obama to submit the forms on the voters' behalf without the voter physically being present at the caucus would violate the rules.

Flooding is such a problem in Southern Ohio that at the request of the Secretary of State, the courts have issued orders allowing voters to cast provisional ballots at their county board of elections. Here is the order for Perry County (pdf)and here is the one for Adams County. (pdf)

Buckeye State Blog is tracking the orders. I agree that this could result in lower voter turnout which would hurt Hillary who is favored in Southeast Ohio. (Bill Clinton carried these counties in the 1992 and 1996 general election, which resulted in his winning Ohio, while Gore and Kerry did not and lost Ohio in the general election.

Obama could be adversely affected by such an order in Athens county, home to Ohio University and it's tens of thousands of students.

Hopefully the candidates' ground operations are prepared for this and have volunteers with vehicles to get people to the polls.

[Texas] will likely be largely ignored by the eventual nominees this fall even as Ohio is avidly courted. It has become so completely Republican that no Democrat has been elected to a statewide office in the past 14 years.

No Republican has been elected President without winning Ohio since Abe Lincoln. The only Democrats in the past century to become President without winning Ohio were FDR and JFK.

Which Democratic nominee in recent history won Ohio? Bill Clinton -- twice. Why? Because unlike Al Gore and John Kerry, he won southeastern Ohio. Gore and Kerry won big in Northern Ohio but lost the state to Bush.

CNN tongiht said there is a huge ice storm and flood warnings in the state and the hyperactive weatherman said it's so bad polling places may be closed in that area. [Corrected to reflect that the ice storms are not expected in the southeastern portion of the state.]

A Cleveland Plain Dealer poll conducted by Mason Dixon of registered Democratic voters who plan to vote in the primary, has Hillary Clinton ahead of Barack Obama, 47% to 43%, with 90% of voters decided on their choice. (Actual poll results are here (pdf.) The margin of error is 4%. There are some geographic and issues differences that may be worth noting.

On NAFTA:

Voters surveyed said they see little difference between the candidates' positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which many Democratic voters blame for the loss of jobs in Ohio and which has been a central theme of both campaigns.

On health care, those surveyed prefer Hillary's plan to Obama's, 33% to 18%. Then there's the geographic difference, which may be significant:

The Plain Dealer poll shows that Clinton's biggest lead is among voters in southeast Ohio, a poor region of the state whose voters supported Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. She leads Obama there, 55 percent to 32 percent; Obama's biggest lead is in the southwest, where he is up 52 percent to 36 percent.

It's not just that Bill Clinton won those areas in 1992 and 1996. It's that John Kerry and Al Gore didn't, and even though they blasted Bush in the northern parts of Ohio, they lost the state because of the southeastern rural vote. And, as Ohio goes, so tends to go the country in November: No Republican since Abe Lincoln has won the presidency without winning Ohio. On the Democratic side, in the last century, only FDR and JFK won the presidency without winning Ohio. (FDR lost Ohio most likely because the Republican VP candidate was from the state.)